A Family Affair

This is what the Russian government censor’s report said about Otrovsky’s first full length play -

‘All The characters are first class villains. The dialogue is filthy. The entire play is an insult to the Russian Merchant class.’

There can be no better publicity for this ‘scabrous and irreverent satire’. A farcical comedy of loose morals and lost manners exposing a mercantile society in which a family ends up avariciously preying upon each other, while regarding blood ties as worthless knots easily undone.

Tsar Nicholas I banned the play from performance because of the uproar it caused amongst the merchants. They were horrified of his depiction of the seamier side of their lives. Ostrovsky was put under police surveillance and a year later he was forced to resign his civil service post.

Presented by Birmingham School of Acting in association with Rosica Colin Ltd